Competition in your business’s industry can be a tough area to navigate. These relationships can range from healthy competition and knowledge shares to head-butting animosity and turf wars. 

For many years, a business’s competition was just that: a turf war. Maybe you were competing with the neighboring clinic up the road offering the same innovative procedure or the new fancy office opening across the street. Whether it’s for patients, revenue, or reputation– for many years, competition fell within a geographical framework. 

COMPETITION ISN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE

These days, in the age of all things digital, your competition more often takes the form of businesses that continue to evolve alongside yours in the digital space. Your competition may still be those that are “close” to you but instead of the office across town it’s those that show up first on the Google Search Results Page (SERP).

A NEW DEFINITION OF COMPETITORS

It’s easy to get caught up in the old school framework of “competitors” but often your neighboring business is not the biggest threat to your office’s success. 

According to Oberlo, 90% of people searching online are likely to click on the first Google SERP result. This is where your real competition lies. The issue is no longer who is at the main intersection in town but who can rank the highest in Google’s algorithm—because this is where users are clicking.

When a potential patient searches one keyword there are millions of results that appear. The question to ask yourself is: where is your website ranking when searching for keywords relevant to your business? 

WHY DIGITAL RANKINGS AND SEO MATTER

This correlation of digital rankings to your business’s success is why Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is so important for your website. SEO is the language that Google, or other search engines use to read, file, and categorize site content. The end goal is to provide the user with the most relevant and up to date information. So how can you make sure your website is up for consideration?

WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT ONLINE COMPETITION

Perform a SWOT Analysis

A great way to assess where your site and practice can improve is by performing a SWOT Analysis. This is a way of analyzing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats surrounding your online presence and website. Maybe you have a strong domain, but your on-page content is lacking. Or maybe your site design is up to date but you’re having trouble gaining traction and converting leads. 

Giving your website a once over and assessing the opportunities for growth is an easy and effective way to identify paths for growth and begin to recognize your online competition. 

Contact the Experts

At the end of the day, you have patients to see and surgeries to perform. SEO and the search engine algorithms are an ever-evolving game, with nuanced changes and frequent updates. Additionally, the medical marketing industry is a complicated one with regulations and HIPPA compliance to consider.

Digital Limelight Media (DLM) has been in the medical marketing industry for over 10 years. We have expertise in on-page and off-page SEO, site design, lead generation and conversion, and helping your practice be more efficient. 

DLM has the experience and expertise to help you not only identify your online competition, but work to strengthen your practice to build a strong online presence, site, and rankings.

LET’S TALK ABOUT YOUR SUCCESS

It’s easy to get lost in the online world but this shouldn’t stop the success of your medical practice. If you are looking to take your website to the next level, fill out our online contact form. We’d love to chat about how our agency can help.